A three-member bench of the apex court, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawad S Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, heard a case pertaining to the NAB report regarding the defunct RPP projects.

“A show cause notice should be issued to the NAB chairman as well as other officials to appear on September 25, 2012, and explain why contempt proceedings may not be initiated against them for not implementing the apex court’s judgment,” says the court in its order. The court ordered that the reply to the show cause notice should be submitted within seven days.

The court further ruled that the NAB chairman will be responsible if the officers responsible for delaying the implementation of this court’s judgment were found to have left the country or if they used other evasive measures.

“In fact, the judgment itself speaks about the misappropriation made by the concerned authorities,” says the court order, adding that despite specific directions for implementing the judgment in letter and spirit, the NAB authorities had intentionally avoided to implement the order, which was a clear violation of the directions of the court and was prima facie tantamount to committing contempt of court as envisaged under Article 204 of the Constitution read with Section 3 of the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2003.

During the hearing, Fauzi Kazmi, NAB Additional Prosecutor General, on the court’s query, submitted that after Muhammad Rafi, Amir Shahid and Ashgar Khan, Kamran Faisal is the Investigation Office (IO) in the case. He further stated that Raza Khan and Zahir Shah were also supervising the investigation while Col Shahzad Anwar Bhatti, DG, was heading the investigation team.